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Title

The China Triangle: Latin America's China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus

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Kevin P. Gallagher

Oxford University Press

March 21, 2016

Author Bio

Kevin P. Gallagher is a professor of global development policy at Boston University's Pardee School for Global Studies, where he co-directs the Global Economic Governance Initiative. He has been a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University, Tsinghua University, and the Center for the State and Society in Argentina. Gallagher has authored and edited more than ten books and writes frequently in the Guardian, Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, and beyond.

In The China Triangle, Kevin P. Gallagher traces the development of the China-Latin America trade over time and covers how it has affected the centuries-old (and highly unequal) U.S.-Latin American relationship. He argues that despite these opportunities Latin American nations have little to show for riding the coattails of the ‘China Boom’ and now face significant challenges in the next decades as China’s economy slows down and shifts more toward consumption and services. While the Latin American region saw significant economic growth due to China's rise over the past decades, Latin Americans saved very little of the windfall profits it earned even as the region saw a significant hollowing of its industrial base. What is more, commodity-led growth during the China boom reignited social and environmental conflicts across the region.

Scholars and reporters have covered the Chinese expansion into East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Africa, the U.S., and Europe. Yet China’s penetration Latin America is as little understood as it is significant-especially for America given its longstanding ties to the region. Gallagher provides a clear overview of China’s growing economic ties with Latin America and points to ways that Latin American nations, China, and even the United States can act in order to make the next decades of China-Latin America economic activity more prosperous for all involved. —Amazon